


Beyond Expectations

by Tallulah_Rasa



Series: Thick as Thieves [2]
Category: Highlander: The Series, Leverage
Genre: Crossover, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:04:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1908591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tallulah_Rasa/pseuds/Tallulah_Rasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot follows Parker's lead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond Expectations

**Author's Note:**

> A follow-up to "Wonderful World," though this could stand alone. This probably won't make much sense if you're not familiar with the first season of "Leverage." You don't really need to know much about "Highlander," though -- just that Amanda's a very beautiful master thief. (For the purposes of this story, I'm assuming that Parker and Amanda have been partners in crime a time or seven.) The dojo where the characters meet belongs to Duncan MacLeod, the Highlander, who's had several hundred years to study the martial arts.

"Hurry _up_ ," Parker whined, but Eliot didn't. Parker stopped then, right in the middle of the sidewalk, grey buildings looming all around in the grey mist, and faced him. "You'll _like_ her. Really."

Eliot highly doubted it. He liked Parker fine -- she'd proven herself in a lot of ways, and he owed her for the whole thing with the horse farm, especially since she was afraid of horses. Or clowns, or whatever. But all that aside, Parker was clearly crazy, which made her unpredictable. Unpredictable, Eliot knew, was never good. And crazy, unpredictable people were likely to have crazy, unpredictable friends, which was a whole other level of not good.

But Parker was still looking at him, and it was dripping and grey out, and, master thief that she was, she'd pretty much figured out how slip past all his locks and walls and interior alarms, all his ways of avoiding, deflecting, or getting away from things he didn't want to do.

It wasn't as if he could hit her, after all.

"Fine," he gritted out, and Parker beamed at him with that smile that wasn't really a smile, and started walking again, Eliot in her wake. He watched as she bumped into a man in a tan raincoat pulling at a yapping poodle and pocketed his wallet, probably more by instinct than design. Purely crazy, the girl was.

Not that the rest of them weren't crazy, but they were crazy in...well, saner ways. The others he could understand, deal with. Hardison was the sanest of the lot, just a little afraid of reality, and uncomfortable with things he couldn't control. Sophie was as clear as broken glass, and just as likely to be dangerous if handled the wrong way. Nate, on the other hand, was nothing-left-to-lose crazy, and it was hard to tell which way he was going to go -- into a bottle, or riding his own particular north wind -- but Eliot figured he'd hear the train coming well before the wreck. And okay, it took more to knock out a man with nothing to lose than to deck a drunk, but he knew where he stood with Nate, and wasn't that why he'd signed on in the first place? That, and it was nice to be one of the white hats. Eliot believed in good and bad, even if he hadn't always been sure what side he'd been on in the past. Now, he knew. And they had a dental plan, which was pretty awesome.

Parker turned around then.

"What? I'm following you," Eliot said irritably.

"You think really loud," Parker said. The she pivoted and started walking up the damp city street again.

Eliot rolled his eyes.

"I never had a dental plan before, either," Parker said over her shoulder.

Which meant Parker had graduated to scary crazy, or Hardison had figured a way to make their damn earpieces broadcast their thoughts.

Eliot sighed and pulled up his collar.

Eventually they reached a martial arts school -- plain, unadorned, unassuming, which Eliot knew meant it was a serious place, run by a real master -- and Parker set about picking the lock. Eliot wasn't sure why they didn't just knock. Hadn't Parker said they were going to meet a friend of hers? Wasn't the friend expecting them? Didn't Parker _ever_ do things like a normal person?

If he was going to be honest about it, which he wasn't, Eliot was a little uneasy about Parker's most-likely unstable friend being a martial arts expert, because Eliot wasn't a fool. Being a retrieval man meant you could hold your own in a fight, but being a retrieval _expert_ meant you'd learned to read your opponents. That you could see their motivations, their patterns, their next likely moves. Against unpredictable crazy, though, you were just another set of fists, with the odds decidedly against you.

Eliot wondered again, shivering in the doorway, why he hadn't just told Parker _no_. He could be home right now, trying out the _coq au vin_ recipe from the new issue of _Bon Appetit_...

He was already backing away when the door opened. "It wasn't locked, Parker," the woman behind the door said. The woman -- Eliot noticed, because retrieval experts had to notice things -- was very beautiful, and wearing a very short black leather skirt, and very high black leather boots, and a very-well-filled-out, very tight black top, and...

"Unlocked's no fun, Amanda," Parker said. "But look! I brought you Eliot!"

Amanda gave Eliot a very thorough once-over and extended her hand. "I'm delighted to meet you, Eliot," she said huskily.

"Guh," Eliot said.

"I like him," Amanda said to Parker.

"I knew you would," Parker said, pushing her way past Amanda toward the inner door, and then darting back to drag Eliot with her. "Are you hungry?" she asked Amanda. "Eliot cooks."

"I'm sure he does," Amanda said, and she gave Eliot a smile that made it hard for him to think about martial arts, or the best ways to use a paring knife to disable a gang of attackers, or even how to scramble eggs. At a loss for anything else to do, Eliot just followed Parker into the dojo. There was crazy, and there was crazy, but hey, he'd charged into uncharted territory before, and it had worked out. Mostly.

Parker turned and looked at him with her scary-sincere look. "This isn't like liberating Croatia," she said seriously.

"Something else entirely," Eliot agreed, and he found himself smiling. There was crazy, and there was crazy, and Eliot had a feeling that maybe he was finally on the way to finding out which kind he was.

END 


End file.
